Hi all. Been mapping for a few years for HL2DM but this is my first Portal map. Just got a few rooms done so far - a large prison style room which you start in, a couple of small very quick rooms for the begineers on basic operations, and the first proper puzzle room. I'm planning on making this a map pack with 2 or 3 maps in it. Enjoy

Just a small update. I've decided to add another room to this map, but it's a big room. You can only get across by portaling, and there are plenty of portal fizzlers to hinder you. Got the basic structure done, and finished details and lighting on about a thrid of the room. I'm not sure whether to keep the volumetric lighting models or not

Less than 72 hours later, the next beta is ready You start in the same place as the first beta, but this time you can go up the elevator to the second room. There are a few issues with this beta, which you can find in the readme included with the map, but they don't affect the puzzles at all.

BTW, slightly off-topic I know not sure exactly where would be the right place to post a small piece about a small wonder of Hammer, that reduced my VVIS time from 35 minutes to 3 seconds Can anyone point me in the right direction?

BTW, slightly off-topic I know not sure exactly where would be the right place to post a small piece about a small wonder of Hammer, that reduced my VVIS time from 35 minutes to 3 seconds Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I'm not quite sure what you're talking about, but if you have a useful tip for Hammer I think you want to start a thread in the "Maps and Mapping" area of the forum.

BTW, slightly off-topic I know not sure exactly where would be the right place to post a small piece about a small wonder of Hammer, that reduced my VVIS time from 35 minutes to 3 seconds Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I wonder if by "small wonder" you mean "func_detail" or better yet "proper map optimization".

Are you talking about func_viscluster ?If so, this is not a magic entity and will seriously harm your map if badly used.. Anyway, with the extra-basic structure of Portal maps, BSP and VIS are in wonderland. Any Portal map that takes longer than 1 or 2 minutes to do VIS compilation is clearly poorly optimized. I have an extra-detailed map (VMF file around 10 MB and Engine errors saying that I reached the limits) that only takes 1:20 for VIS (but 2h or so for RAD).

I could make some certain brushes func_detail, and reduce VVIS to a few seconds by itself, but I need to keep some brushes as world brushes to keep the lighting from screwing up. Now can we get back on topic here. Had loads of comments here and in the downloads section, but only 1 is related to my map.

Nice map so far. I had the issues with the elevator that you mentioned in the readme. I think you should add an autosave at the start of the second challenge, but I look forward to seeing the next part.